1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle lamp having a reflector and shield plates which are separately mounted in a lamp body.
2. Related Art
There has been proposed a lamp employed for a vehicle such as an automobile, the lamp being made up through the steps of forming a reflector by bending a metal plate into a separate body, mounting and holding the separate body tightly to the interior of a lamp body formed by resin molding. In the lamp like this, a bulb inserting hole for use in inserting a light bulb as a light source opens in the substantially central position of the back of the reflector. Consequently, places near the bulb inserting hole or normally on both lateral sides of the bulb inserting hole are so structured that the reflector is held tightly to the interior of the lamp body by means of screws in order to have the reflector well-balanced. In the lamp of this sort, namely, in the case of a flat lamp having a small vertical dimension, heat shield plates for respectively covering the upper and lower interior portions of the lamp body are held tightly to the interior of the lamp body to prevent the interior portions from being damaged by overheating resulting from the heat generated by the bulb; in other words, the heat shield plates are used to prevent the upper and lower interior portions of the lamp body from being overheated by shielding the heat generated by the bulb.
Since the fixing screw is positioned in both places of the bulb inserting hole in an effective reflective surface area of the vehicle lamp thus structured, there develops problems including lowering light reflective efficiency in this area, thus resulting in lowering the irradiation luminance of the lamp, and deteriorating the neatness of the external appearance of the lamp when the lamp is looked at through the front lenses because the screws can be seen therethrough. In addition, the problem in this case is that workability is low because the work of tightening a plurality of screws as the work of fixing the reflector is required. In the aforesaid lamp furnished with the heat shield plates together with the reflector in the lamp body, further, there also exists a problem arising from not only an increase in the number of components constituting the lamp since the heat shield plates are formed separately from the reflector and held tightly to the interior of the lamp body but also poorer workability as long as the whole lamp assembly work is concerned because the work of fixing the heat shield plates, independent of the reflector, to the lamp body by means of the screws or the like is required.